Dripping with style or floody disaster?

[OJ46]

No worries mate, just scanned down my purchase history and This is the bars one I ordered. They do a 25mm x 80mm so it isn't far off being right and also comes with the thermal tape. The tape seems far too weak at first and I was worried about the heatsink falling off, but after getting a heat cycle or 2 through it it's stuck fast

That's not a bad idea cutting a hole the size of the screw head. Guessing if you drilled the hole from underneath and only went a couple of mm into the fins you'd be able to remove the M.2 and the screw would be almost invisible

 

[Cenedd]

Weird. Cannot decide if the pictures are black with reflection of flash or silver. Wanted black. Will have a try with the ones I've ordered tomorrow. Not a bad idea with drilling half way and ending up with a captive screw - hadn't thought of that. Will see if the location and spacing of the fins allow it. Cheers. Thanks for the offer of posting them too; much appreciated.

 

[Smffy]

EDIT: Scrap that, I'm a moron and for the 20th time in my life seem to have forgotten what DDR stands for... *Faceplants desk in disgrace*

Yep, double it

If you tweak using EVGA Precision you'll be able to get a little more out of the memory, however you'll find that if you boost the core then it will simply run faster within target temps anyway while its water cooled. At least that is what mine does... (not hydro copper but full block installed). Presume like mine yours doesnt get over about 45-50c?

Nice build overall!

 

[OJ46]

Weird. Cannot decide if the pictures are black with reflection of flash or silver. Wanted black. Will have a try with the ones I've ordered tomorrow. Not a bad idea with drilling half way and ending up with a captive screw - hadn't thought of that. Will see if the location and spacing of the fins allow it. Cheers. Thanks for the offer of posting them too; much appreciated.

No worries, always happy to help. Never would have got my setup sorted without the help and advice of some of the guys on here

Yep, double it

If you tweak using EVGA Precision you'll be able to get a little more out of the memory, however you'll find that if you boost the core then it will simply run faster within target temps anyway while its water cooled. At least that is what mine does... (not hydro copper but full block installed). Presume like mine yours doesnt get over about 45-50c?

Nice build overall!

Cheers Smffy Ah cool, so probably not worth spending too much time tinkering with it then, especially as it seems to run whatever I throw at it on stock speeds anyway. Not had it reach 45°C yet, usually tops out around 42°C - 43°C, but then I've currently got both the CPU and GPU running stock speeds, so I'd hope they were pumping out a bit less heat! Had a play with a few settings within GTA V and the Nvidia Control Panel earlier. Can't believe how much better it is to let the Nvidia settings do all the legwork, graphics are better & frame rates are up, double win!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

arrrrrrhhh... I was trying to decide if I needed LED lighting and I think I do now lol.

Are you happy with the kit you have? I was looking at the NZXT Hue+ v2 previously...

I love the little touch with the RGB led on the front panel... I'm not sure if I could do that with the NZXT hue as I think it only has strips.

 

[OJ46]

arrrrrrhhh... I was trying to decide if I needed LED lighting and I think I do now lol.

Are you happy with the kit you have? I was looking at the NZXT Hue+ v2 previously...

I love the little touch with the RGB led on the front panel... I'm not sure if I could do that with the NZXT hue as I think it only has strips.

Yeah I'm more than happy with it, the software is simple and you can easily add a few temp sensors to have different lights running off different sensors etc, or just leave them cycling through different chosen colours / pulsing brightness etc etc. I've left mine on ice white but the RGB on the front starts a really dim (10% brightness) light blue, then as the water temp rises it gets brighter as it goes through dark blue / purple / pinkish tones before going onto 80% brightness and fully red at 40°C. As the water is usually somewhere in the mid 30's - very low 40's you can pretty much guess it to within a degree or 2 just by glancing at it quickly

Only thing I would say about the Aquaero LED's is when you select a pure ice white they actually have quite a blue tint to them, but if you just turn the blue channel down to 50% they're perfect

 

[OJ46]

Right guys, in a few weeks when I (hopefully!) get a bit of spare cash there's going to be some alterations, and unfortunately she could turn into a bit of a biffer!

At the moment I'd like to think 'Dripping With Style' was an OK name for her, as I look at her like the 9.5/10 you chase after all night in the club. Unfortunately she's also like the looker in the club in other ways, in that they never quite perform as well as you'd like them to when you really get down to it... Sooooo, I think she might have to be renamed to '4am Chunkster' as she's about to turn into the 'that'll do' end of nighter that usually turns out to be a cracker!

I'll explain more: Firstly it seems I've made a balls-up in using Primochill Primoflex tubing with Mayhems Pastel fluid, as the Primochill website basically says you should only use water with the tubing to avoid plasticiser issues. As that means draining and flushing the entire loop, I think that as I'm also not too happy about the water temperature (hitting 45°C when running Project Cars on Ultra settings in a wet race) being high even though ambient is still fairly low, sod the looks, lets make this baby perform! Now the CPU (60°C) and GPU (45°C) I'm quite happy with, but I'm worried when summer arrives it's going to struggle a bit more.

So, onto the alterations...

What I'm thinking is replace the 120mm rad in the front with a 240mm, moving the 120mm to the rear of the case. Then switching out the 360mm crossflow (thinking this one really isn't performing too brilliantly) with a far fatter 240mm crossflow, probably one of these.
Just wondering what the general consensus is regarding the alterations?

• Is the Mayhems fluid really that bad with the Primochill tubing?

• Is 45°C OK for water temp or do I REALLY need to bring it down a bit?

• How much should I expect the larger radiator area to lower the temperatures?

• Am I going to ruin a good build and make it look like a 4am'er?

Also any advise on flushing the loop would be greatly appreciated, as I'd rather not make too many more noob mistakes

 

[Cenedd]

45°C is a bit on the toasty side for coolant. A lot of tubing and some pumps are only rated to 50°C - some to 60°C. I was a bit worried when I hit 40°C....but then I found my temp sensor was out of whack and it was closer to 35.

No idea on the Primochill but it shouldn't have plasticiser in it that will leach these days. That said, I tried the Primochill....hated it and went back to Tygon E3603. It's soooo much more flexible (without kinking) and just makes the Primochill stuff look naff. It is a tad pricey but you don't need lots.

Can't help on the rad performance I'm afraid - my performance is too coloured by the passive rads that I don't want to remove....unless the itch to replace them with an over-the-top Mo-Ra gets too strong

 

[OJ46]

That's what was worrying me re the water temp, some of the stories about plasticiser leaching being worse as temps get higher etc. The sensor seems to be working OK as at idle it's a couple of degrees above ambient as expected, and usually only goes up to high 30's when playing GTA V but Project Cars seems to add another 5 or 6 degrees with everything cranked up. I blame the 980Ti for boosting itself so well at stock settings

Will have to look into the Tygon before ordering any new tubing, although I was quite happy with the Primochill until they told me I shouldn't be!

Think I might scrap the plan above though and throw both current radiators in the cupboard, then use a full fat 360mm in the front and the fat 240mm crossflow as shown in the top

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Now I'm worried I'm under-radded....

I suppose my 360 is twice the thickness of yours there, but then my 140mm is slim and I have an extra 980Ti. I have read that crossflow radiators don't perform as well as the normal types but no personal experience obviously.

Hmm.....

 

[OJ46]

To be honest I was worried whether the crossflow would be any good before I installed it as I'd read some quite bad reviews on them, but thought on standard clocks it would be fine... What I didn't allow for was the fact the 980Ti boosts like crazy as standard! Only used it for looks / tube routing but think changing the 120mm to a 360mm and the 360mm slim crossflow for a 240mm fat crossflow should be more than adequate. Even with the awful slim rad doing most of the work the temps for the CPU and GPU were bang on, so wouldn't worry too much about yours with a proper 360mm in it. With it being twice the thickness and not crossflow it should be far more effective

 

[Cenedd]

Not sure if this is helpful but an upcoming build I'm planning is for a friend that has a Black Ice GT Stealth 360 crossflow. That's thin (30mm), crossflow and full of dust bunnies so performance is not great. I think that crossflow may be worse because the coolant (I would think) only does one pass of the rad rather than two...but I'd be interested to see what difference it makes when you change them as we're contemplating doing the same.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

An easy compromise would be to start off by adding a 240mm at the front instead of the 120...

Why don't you do that and see how it works out before stuffing more/bigger rads in? That change would be very simple and allows you to keep your current routing intact.

Then if you need more you can look at swapping to a thicker rad up top.

 

[TechMinerUK]

Is there not a way you can keep the 360 and have a 240 as the 360 will allow decent cooling performance whilst not having to have the fans on a high setting compared to the 240 as it will be slimmer and have less resistance to air moving through it.

 

[OJ46]

Not sure if this is helpful but an upcoming build I'm planning is for a friend that has a Black Ice GT Stealth 360 crossflow. That's thin (30mm), crossflow and full of dust bunnies so performance is not great. I think that crossflow may be worse because the coolant (I would think) only does one pass of the rad rather than two...but I'd be interested to see what difference it makes when you change them as we're contemplating doing the same.

I'd definitely swap if for a either a normal rad or a fatter crossflow. After playing with fan settings I think the 120mm is performing near identical to the 360mm, which sucks! Will see what the fatter 240mm crossflow is like, although mated to a 'proper' 360mm it shouldn't really matter all that much

An easy compromise would be to start off by adding a 240mm at the front instead of the 120...

Why don't you do that and see how it works out before stuffing more/bigger rads in? That change would be very simple and allows you to keep your current routing intact.

Then if you need more you can look at swapping to a thicker rad up top.

That was something I contemplated, but I decided that as I was going to have to drain the entire loop regardless that I may as well go all out & be 100% sure I won't have to drain it a second time. Not too worried about the tubing as it's cheap enough to not care too much, will leave pump > GPU and GPU > CPU then just change the rest

 

[OJ46]

Is there not a way you can keep the 360 and have a 240 as the 360 will allow decent cooling performance whilst not having to have the fans on a high setting compared to the 240 as it will be slimmer and have less resistance to air moving through it.

I could easily swap the 120mm out for a 240mm but unfortunately I don't think the 360mm crossflow is up to much, doesn't seem to cool much if any better than the 120mm in the front

 

[TechMinerUK]

I could easily swap the 120mm out for a 240mm but unfortunately I don't think the 360mm crossflow is up to much, doesn't seem to cool much if any better than the 120mm in the front

Now that I think about it, when I was looking for radiators I remember a few people saying that the crossflow radiators werent as good as the others (Unfortunately I don't remember the source of this or why) but you might want to try another 360 with a different tubing route as if you are bothered about performance then radiators follow "bigger = better" logic

 

[OJ46]

Now that I think about it, when I was looking for radiators I remember a few people saying that the crossflow radiators werent as good as the others (Unfortunately I don't remember the source of this or why) but you might want to try another 360 with a different tubing route as if you are bothered about performance then radiators follow "bigger = better" logic

Think I'm definitely leaning towards a 'proper' 360mm in the front instead of the 120mm and then switch out the ultra thin 360mm crossflow for a far fatter 240mm crossflow. Shouldn't really matter if the 240mm crossflow isn't brilliant then as the 360mm intake radiator will be doing most of the work, and also has the benefit of removing 1 exhaust fan from the current setup so it should have a better positive pressure in the case

 

[LePhuronn]

Such a shame, that loop is lovely looking.

From the research I was doing a while ago, crossflow radiators aren't as good simply because the coolant isn't in the radiator for as long as a normal radiator. From what I gather, the flow goes in, gets split between the 2 internal pipes and then combines before exiting. Normal rads have a "U" shape thing going on so the coolant gets double exposure to air flow.

Looking at your proposed changes though, I think you'd struggle getting a 240 in the front with the 360 as I don't think you can drop it down to where you indicate and still have 2 fans on it - is there an intake that far down?

And to be honest, even with a crossflow rad I'm surprised your coolant temp is as high as it is. I'm not sure that just upping the rad thickness will help enough on its own. Can you turn your pump up a bit to see if that helps? Bump the fans up a bit too?

 

[Cenedd]

Also worth checking the temp probes for accuracy. I've just replaced a Phyobia G1/4 temp probe as it was either off or a different spec to the Aquaero probes. Difference increased as things got hotter with two others reading around 35 when this one read 40. The new one is much closed but the three (res, flow and pump) still aren't within a degree.